icastle

The solution really depends how sophisticated you want to get and how much money you want to spend. If you take this right back to basics, a really basic 'no frills' piezo preamp is just changing the impedance of the piezo to make it sufficient to drive an amp in the same way that a magnetic pickup would. As a starting off point I would treat the preamped piezo signal as being no different to the output of a magnetic pickup and go for something like this: Obviously, it's just a base level starting off point. You would (probably) want to add switchable jack socket to conserve the preamp battery, there may be a need to 'tweak' the piezo preamp and maybe even add an extra layer of control by having a seperate tone control for the piezo, but it's probably a good place to start. HTH

No aircon ?!? No lift ?!? Well that's me well and truly beaten then...

I'm thinking you'll be needing some sort of blend control between the two pickup sets - if you don't then you'll only get the 'right' blend when the overall volume control is at a certain position (making it pretty much useless as a volume control). A more 'elegant' solution would be to fit a blend control prior to the volume control so you don't lose it's functionality - so to keep it simple, a dual gang pot.

I'd say no. Your TE combo has an 8Ω speaker fitted and can drive a load down to 4Ω. If you connect an 8Ω speaker to the extension socket then you get a 4Ω load and the amp will be happy. If you add a 4Ω speaker to the extension socket then you get a 2.6Ω load and, in all likelihood, the aroma of lightly toasted electronics.

Hmmm. If you go back to childhood we wanted to be those that we idolised - Batman, Flash Gordon, various stetsoned gunslingers and daredevils. I can't help but wonder sometimes if we just do a variation of it in adulthood because we feel a need to be associated with our grown up idols, that their (reputed) talent will in some way rub off on us. Yeah, I can play loads of twiddly sh*t that'll impress an audience, but there's no disguising the fact that it'd just be twiddly sh*t for the sake of it. I get far more satisfaction being a musician.

[quote name='Count Bassy' timestamp='1327529125' post='1513064'] Exactly! Even if it is the original band - I saw 10cc a couple of years ago - brilliant - my on;y complain was that it was too much like the CD! [/quote] Oooh - I like 10cc. Great musicians and incredibly witty lyrics. They've come back from the dead so many times that if Captain Scarlet was a musician then that's the band he'd be in.

Well if your fretting hand technique needed a slight adjustment and you've been playing a bass with a high action then it's perhaps not too surprising you're feeling the after effects of it. Leaving aside the high action issue (that's fixable if setup properly) there are a number of other factors to consider, the most obvious ones, to me at least, being: Strap adjustment - altering the height of the bass means altering the angle of the arm and in turn puts varying degrees of stress on the back of the hand as you fret. Neck angle - if too shallow then it's going to strain your hand and you're realy going to have to press hard with your fingers to compensate. Arm/hand position - changing your hand position if it's wrong is a fine idea, but you need to 'unlearn' what you've taught yourself and might need to move your arm position slightly to compensate for that change. It's extremely unlikely that one lesson will cause anything other than temporary discomfort, but your fingers are telling you to get it sorted out.

If I specifically go out to watch a band then I expect to be entertained. If I wanted to hear an exact copy of an original then I'd have stayed at home and listened to the CD. I find it interesting to hear 'new takes' on familiar tunes, sometimes they work a treat, and sometimes they don't, but isn't learning how to recognise that difference what makes us better musicians..?

[quote name='BottomE' timestamp='1327515472' post='1512757'] I am a bit anal like this to the point of having the track loop on an mp3 in the car so that its really stuck in my head etc [/quote] I do that with studio pieces I'm learning. If I sit at home and try to listen then I'll be doing three other things at the same time. If I'm in the car then there's no escape...

Excellent Good luck with it and keep us posted

[quote name='chaypup' timestamp='1327510203' post='1512617'] Even the between song banter is the same each night and is scripted and rehearsed. [/quote] Absolutely. I've even known verbal 'trip ups', that appear to be mistakes and have the audience in stitches, appear night after night on tour.

[quote name='norvegicusbass' timestamp='1327509667' post='1512610'] Have you ever noticed though that the "iconic" basslines tend to be easy to play? I am thinking of basslines that I heard while I was a young un like Public Image, Transmission and The Chain. [/quote] I could come out with something like 'it's because that simple regular rhythm stimulate our inherited race memories' but it's more likely that making it more complicated would mean people would forget it...

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1327482911' post='1511855'] They just arrived in the post, and indeed they do have three! I was wondering how on Earth they worked with two (if you'll pardon the pun). Thanks iKay and iCastle. So... [attachment=98121:wiring-6.jpg] [/quote] That looks about right to me. I presume the switch is one of the grey and black plastic ones and not an open 'skeleton' metal one? If it's a metal one and you get a 'buzz' then you'll probably need to earth the metalwork of the switch.

[quote name='paul_5' timestamp='1327486477' post='1511947'] I play trouser jazz. [/quote] Random stains?

Kinda depends on what the song is. Some tunes have distinctive bass parts (someone was laughing at themselves after mucking up 'Alright Now' on here recently) and sound odd if not played as per the original. Other tunes will stand a little artistic licence. If you're playing in a covers band then I guess the secret is just deciding on a sympathetic balance between 'original' and 'improvised'. If you're playing in a tribute band however, then it needs to be an exact copy of the original or else you'll get stalked.

[quote name='Jimmyp28' timestamp='1327492767' post='1512123'] Is that really good enough? Just because one person say its worth 5000 we except it? [/quote] Well I suppose you could start the ball rolling by popping into the Wal workshop to tell them to make you a MK3 six string and then inform them you've decided you're only going to pay £200 for it. Let us know how you get on.

[quote name='Johnston' timestamp='1327451007' post='1511649'] I thought that was a diagram from one of them surgeons using dodgy implants. + make this bit bigger - make this bit smaller. [/quote] You need to get out less...

The selling price of any product is market driven - if a consumer base is willing to pay £x for a product then, with a little tweaking here and there to entice certain types of customer, that is what the item will initially sell for. If the market can't support that price then it either drops or the business folds. It's probably also worth mentioning that the major manufacturers are kitted up to produce several hundred if not thousands of basses a day and are making economies of scale. An independant maker will produce perhaps a dozen basses a week, not make the cost savings that mass production brings and still have to stay profitable.

Well a bubble machine is usually just a fan blowing air and perhaps another one to rotate the 'dipper' through the bubble liquid. DC motors aren't fussy about polarity (reverse the polarity and it'll just spin backwards). I'd suggest trying a positive tip to begin with and if the fan 'sucks' instead of 'blows' then turn the polarity round to make it spin the other way.

[quote name='Ed_S' timestamp='1327447138' post='1511556'] Personally, I just don't like what being a 5 does visually to the proportions of a Precision. The Jazz doesn't seem to look quite as bloated for the extra string, but as I don't much like the Jazz body shape that's a non-starter irrespective. What I find least aesthetically appealing all round is the 4+1 headstock layout. All of which adds up to mean that my one and only non-Fender is my 5 - a LTD Surveyor, which I think looks well proportioned and is 5-in-line up top. [/quote] Funny you should say that. I was just looking at them again a minute ago and they do seem to have a look about them that smacks of 'afterthought' compared to other manufacturers that use either 5+0 or 3+2 layouts. Then again, we got used to 3+1 on the MusicMan range so perhaps it's just a matter of time before 4+1 looks 'right'.

[quote name='brensabre79' timestamp='1327427898' post='1511086'] The preset resistors only have two points [/quote] It'll have a 3rd connector there somewhere. If you've gone for a horizontal one then it'll have two pins next to each other on one end and a third connector on the opposite end (so they'd make a triangle if you drew lines between them). I think what you've seen is that it's hard to get an angle where all three legs are showing when you photograph them.

[quote name='Ukelele Salad' timestamp='1327429169' post='1511129'] It's nice, don't know why people are so down on Fender 5's. [/quote] I don't think people are 'down' on them, I think it's more a case of being not quite so 'up' on them as they are other brands. As to 'why' we don't see more of them in use, that's probably something that Fender marketing people have considered long and hard. I think part of it is because the Fender name has become synomynous with the four string variety and people hold those traditional values close to their hearts. Breaking away from that preconception of what a bass 'should' look like could lose them some of their market share if they pushed it too hard and fast.

Yep [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/markbass_rack_mount.htm"]http://www.thomann.de/gb/markbass_rack_mount.htm[/url]

I'd guess that the Fender 5 string market is very small compared to their well established 4 string market. I must admit that 'Fender' automatically equates to '4 string' whenever I hear it. Music stores will only stock things that they know they have a good chance of selling within a reasonable timescale - anything other than that is a slippery path to commercial suicide.

No problem. Polarity symbols look like this: This one indicates a negative tip. If the + and - symbols are reversed on the diagram, then it's a positive tip.